But I know my little sister and she isn't as rotten to the core as Devon suspects.
Although I don't blame Devon for his opinion of her, trying to blackmail him into dating her was a real dick move.
I text Margaux as we pull up into our huge driveway: I see her car out front, so I know that she's home but our house is such a monstrosity that it’d take me ages to find her otherwise.
“Ok, she’s swimming in the indoor pool. There's a changing room before entering the actual pool area. Let me go in by myself and you can wait there, if you wanna listen. Everyone else can wait upstairs in the living room.”
Everyone stays behind except Devon, Aubrey's brother and Sam: they're fucking sure that Margaux is responsible for everything and want the satisfaction to prove me wrong.
I inhale deeply and brush my lips with Aubrey's, before stepping into the pool room.
I see my sister swimming furious laps into the Olympic size pool and sit down on one of the loungers that dot the bottom of the room, where there’s a fully stocked bar and a kitchenette with a fridge stocked with all sorts of snacks.
I wait until she lifts herself out of the water and walks towards me, dripping wet and wringing the water out of her long blonde hair.
She's wearing a one piece dark purple suit with cut outs on her hips that's functional for working out but also pretty.
Now I’m not a creep or a weirdo but I know that my sister's really pretty, this is why I understand that my teammates want to hook up with her but I fucking hate when they treat her like a piece of meat.
“Hey Gaux-Gaux, have you got any plans for tonight? I have some friends coming over, we're gonna order pizza and watch movies. Why don't you join us?”
She starts towelling herself off and her pale blue eyes are fixed on me when she asks me who's coming.
“Aubrey, Devon, Landon and Teague and some others.”
She rolls her eyes and makes a snide comment about our choice of menu.
“Pizza? I'm sure coach would kick your asses if he knew that you're eating pizza before the State Championship final.”
I shrug.
“We need our energy, we wanna carb up.”
“With pizza? If you’d told me earlier, I would've made you some nice baked sweet potatoes or brown rice or some other healthy carbs. You know I don't do carbs anyway, so I guess I'll order a salad.”
I shrug: she’s very strict with her diet.
“Yeah well, pizza’s one of Aubrey's favourites and tonight she needs cheering up.”
She scoffs.
“Why, what the fuck happened to her? Did one of you losers see sense and decided to dump her ass?”
I feel a bout of instant relief when she looks none the wiser about today's events at school but sigh at her mean remark.
I guess though that if I have to choose, I’d rather her be mean than guilty.
“No, no one dumped her.”
“Then what? By the way Knoxie, it's so unfair that you all cut classes today. You're eighteen and Mom doesn't get an instant alert if you don't report. I got my ass chewed off this morning because she had to drive me to school and pay a fine at the front office because I couldn't find my ID. I can't wait to turn eighteen next week, so she won't have to know everything. She was so pissed that she had to move a meeting to sign for a new ID for me!”
My relief increases when I realise that Margaux wasn't even at school today when the whole thing went down, but it's a short lasting feeling, because my sister takes two boxes from a handbag near her lounger and swallows two pills.
The boxes look identical to the ones that were found in Aubrey's locker.
My chest starts aching as if my heart was held in a vice-like grip, with rusty spikes eating at my flesh: I can't believe that Devon was right and my sister, my best friend, is behind all the trouble that Aubrey has been through.
My gaze hardens and I grab her bag, going straight for the cardboard boxes with the pills.
This shit is illegal in the US: it must come from elsewhere.
“Care to explain where these come from?”
Margaux doesn't seem concerned.
“Cool your jets! I’ve been taking that stuff for years! Do you think that protein shakes and gruelling work-outs would be enough to keep me in a size zero? I need extra help.”
Normally, I’d give her a lecture about the dangers of popping illegal diet pills and then tell her that she's gorgeous, no matter what size she wears but right now I'm too furious and sick to my stomach at the thought that Margaux could be capable of what she did.
And I fucking defended her in front of everyone.
“Did you put this shit in Devon's, Teague's, and Landon’s drinks?”
I see her fidget with the gold bracelet I got her for her sweet sixteen: she never takes it off and when she's lying, she fucking plays with it.
And sure enough, she plays daft.
“I don't know what you're talking about.”
If she expected me to yell at her or cuss, she’s obviously disappointed because she knows that when I'm really mad, when I really mean business, I become calm at least on the outside.
“Margaux, stop lying to me! Did you put those pills in the guys’ sports drinks and then asked Aubrey to hand them out, so that they’d think that she did it? I suggest that you tell the truth, Sis. I'm one second from walking away and never speaking to you again. I can take you being a scheming, conniving bitch, but if you lie to me about it, we're done.”
She has the decency to avert her gaze and direct it to the tiled floor of the indoor pool room.
“I ... yeah.”
My heart clenches in my chest and I shake my head, as if the movement could make those words dissipate and make me un-hear them.
“Margaux ...”
I whisper her name: I’m sad, horrified, and angry. So fucking angry.
“How could you? Can you even begin to understand how fucking stupid that is? Aside from taking that shit yourself, have you thought of the possible consequences?”
She doesn't look me in the eye when she tells me that she was jealous.
“I wanted Devon so much and he had eyes just for Aubrey. And she wasn't just fucking him! She was taking you away from me too! And she wasn't happy with being your girlfriend and fucking Devon on the side, she had to go and fuck Landon and Teague too! You know I’ve always had a thing for Teague and he never even looked at me! But Aubrey barely set foot inside the school building and Teague is wrapped around her little finger! You and Teague were never into relationships but that night, at our first party of the season, after Landon kissed her during ‘suck and blow’, you almost had a fight over her! I was so fucking mad at all of you and at her! And I wanted to punish them—”
I stop her with a question.
“Have you thought of the consequences if one of them had a bad reaction to those pills? Margaux, you could've fucking killed someone! And for what? Because two guys you liked didn't like you back?”
A tear slides out from one of her eyes, silently running down her face.
“I didn't think it was a big deal. I’ve been taking that shit for four years. I wanted to punish the guys and make her feel the way I feel. Alone.”
I shake my head.
“I can't believe you, Margaux! You're at the top of the A-Class, you're one of the smartest people I know. How could you not think about how dangerous this was? I’m not even beginning to discuss how morally horrible and illegal. But you could have really hurt someone!”
She doesn't say anything, she cries quietly, her head bowed in humiliation.
“So why didn't you fuck with my drink too, huh? I'm in love with Aubrey, just like the others.”
She sobs loudly before wailing that she loves me.
“You're my brother, my best and only friend. I knew you liked Aubrey and I thought that with the others out of the picture and you taking Devon’s spot as QB1, she’d choose you. I didn't want her to have you but I thought that if I could
date Devon, I wouldn't lose you. That maybe we could double date. I thought I was killing two birds with one stone. That by getting Devon kicked out of the team, I was helping you get your girl.”
“Margaux, that's so fucked up! First of all, I'm your brother how could you ever lose me? And seriously, when you saw that your plan failed, what the fuck were you thinking by drugging the whole team and then planting your shitty drugs in Aubrey's locker? Getting her expelled? If I could've forgiven the first incident but this last stunt you pulled—”
She stops crying, she's looking at me as if I was crazy.
“What are you talking about? Expelled? Drugging the whole team? I just put the pills in those drinks once. I just wanted to punish the guys and split Devon and Aubrey up. I don't know what you're talking about.”
I level a hard gaze on her.
“Don't fucking lie to me!”
But she doesn't back down.
“Knox, I swear on my favourite pair of Louboutins! I don't know what you're talking about.”
I tell her what happened this morning and she swears that she had nothing to do with it.
“I wasn't even at school first period. You can double check with Mom. As I already told you, my school ID was missing and Mom had to take me and sign for a new one to be issued. And by the time that was done, it was second period, time for Ms Webber’s class.”
I take a deep breath and look at my sister: I believe her.
I know that at this point she wouldn't lie to me.
But if Margaux didn't put those pills in Aubrey's locker, that means that there's two people who hate her and the guys enough to do this.
And it could only be someone who knows about what Margaux did to begin with: so one of the cheerleaders she trusts, a football player if she hooked up with him and spilled the beans when she was drunk or ... Tyler maybe?
My mind is going a million miles per second and I don't notice that Aubrey has stepped out of the changing room and is standing between our loungers, looking between me and my sister.
If I feared that what she just heard could make her dump me, the look in her eyes makes me love her even more.
Instead of the anger that would be more than justified right now, I see pity in her dark blue eyes.
She looks at Margaux and my sister takes a shuddering breath in an attempt to stop crying.
“What are you doing here? Did you come here to gloat? You won! You got Devon and Teague and my brother loves you, he just said that. Not likes you, he fucking loves you. And I’ll probably lose him for what I did. Are you happy now?”
She sounds bitter and defeated and while I’m still so fucking mad at her that I can barely look at her, my heart breaks for her.
I never quite understood how lonely she felt.
But my attention is firmly on the showdown between the two girls I love the most in the entire world.
Aubrey lowers herself onto my lounger, by my side, and looks at Margaux as if she were pondering an answer to her question.
“No, Margaux. I’m not happy. And for what it's worth, I'm so sorry about how you feel. Look, I met Devon in the summer, way before school and things got ... complicated. When you asked me if I was fucking him and I said no, I was telling you the truth. We were barely speaking at the time but we had unfinished business. I thought he hated me and after that thing with the drinks, that feeling got even stronger. I didn't mean to step on your toes or anything like that. But I wish you'd talked to me openly instead of acting the way you did. And as for your brother ... Knox loves you more than anyone else in the entire world. I would never have tried to take him away from you. If anything, the fact that we both love him, is something we have in common that could be a solid foundation for us to build a friendship on.”
Margaux hesitates before asking her how it is possible that she isn't mad at her.
“After everything I did to you ...”
And Aubrey sets her straight.
“Oh, hell no! I’m fucking mad at you! I wanna strangle you and bitch slap you all at once. But in time I’ll get over it. For Knox's sake. Because I really love your brother, Margaux.”
My sister looks at her with a mixture of awe and diffidence.
“Do you really? You love him but you're fucking three more guys?”
“I don't expect you to understand all this, Margaux. I love each of them with all my heart. And I know we’ve only known each other for a couple of months and that having a relationship with all four of them will be four times more complicated but they're worth it. We’ll work on it; like the guys are working on trusting each other, for me. And this is the thing: of course they're smoking hot but when I met each of them, my heart knew that I could trust them. And my heart right now is telling me that I need to work on forgiving you for Knox's sake because I know that if he loves you so much, it must mean that you're worth it.”
“Oh, Aubrey ...”
I look at my girlfriend and my heart overflows with love as I wrap an arm around her shoulder and pull my sister closer, hugging both my girls.
I know it's fucking sappy but I couldn't give any less fucks than I do, because for a just a second, my world is damn well perfect.
But after holding them both close for a long moment, I pull back and ask Margaux for her help with figuring out who planted those pills in Aubrey's locker.
“If you help us figure it out, and get Aubrey re-admitted at school, I swear that all will be forgiven.”
Aubrey nods encouragingly but my sister still looks hesitant and if I didn't know her as a hard-ass fearless bitch, I’d say that the emotion in her eyes is fear.
“Gaux-Gaux, what's wrong? Do you have an idea about who planted those pills?”
Her eyes widen in terror when she nods and stands up abruptly.
“Yeah, I need to see if I'm right, if the school ID I lost is where I think it is.”
The double patio doors that connect the indoor swimming pool to our backyard open and ... I should've fucking known it!
Aubrey
“WERE YOU LOOKING FOR this?”
A short blonde girl, who looks like a slightly older version of Margaux walks in from the double patio doors that connect the indoor swimming pool to the backyard.
She throws a lanyard with an ID attached to it at Margaux, hitting her square in the chest.
As the two girls glare at each with matching pale blue eyes, I observe how they're both rail thin but have really big boobs.
They have the same shade of dark blonde hair but while Margaux’s reaches her backbone, the other girl sports an edgy, asymmetric bob.
They have Knox’s same high cheekbones and sexy, luscious lips and the same cute smattering of freckles on their noses.
“Michelle, I didn't know you were back!”
Knox doesn't sound pleased, he obviously doesn't have the same love for his older sister, because he doesn't look at her like he does at Margaux.
Michelle's lips quirk up in a cruel smirk.
“I got back last night, just in time to finish what our useless little sis started but didn't have the balls to see through.”
Knox glares at her and shakes his head in disbelief.
“I should've known that you were behind this whole shit show!”
Michelle stares down at both of her younger siblings.
“Yeah, well what do you know? I thought Margaux was like me but it turns out that she's a soft little idiot like you, brother.”
She says brother as if the word left a bad taste in her mouth.
“After all, did you think that your sweet, little ‘Gaux-Gaux’ could've even thought about any of this? She acts all tough but she's weak. This is why no one ever gives her the time of day or ever sticks around after they fucked her! And even the fact that anyone even wants to fuck her she has me to thank for, because if I didn't get her those diet pills, she’d be as fat as your girlfriend! So yes, as usual, when the boy she liked wouldn't even let her blow him, she came crying to me and I suggested getti
ng him kicked out of the football team to bring him down a notch or two.”
Knox clenches his fists.
“I should've known that this whole thing was your idea! I knew that Margaux would never think about something so fucking despicable! Why the fuck did you mess with my girlfriend, Michelle?”
Michelle laughs and her eyes gleam with pride, as if what Knox just said came from recognition rather than disgust.
“Yeah well, I’ve always been the smart one in this family! So when Margaux came to me crying because your QB1 wouldn't fuck her, I thought about putting shit in his drink and getting him kicked out of the team. I’m fucking my college football team coach and I got the idea when he told me how anti-doping rules and testing are being enforced more and more both at college and high school level. And obviously at first the idea was just to get Devon kicked out of the team and get Margaux's rival suspected of it, so that Sis could get her guy. And you know how much I believe in knowing as much as you can about your enemy in order to destroy them, so I asked Margaux to tell me everything she knew about the other girl. That's when she told me that her name was Aubrey Richmond and I knew that getting her dumped by the quarterback wasn't enough, that I wouldn't stop until she got kicked out of school and her life was destroyed.”
I’m about to ask her why but I don't need to, because Michelle wants me to know how much she hates me and is obviously very proud of her scheme.
“It looked like I got at least part of my wish when Margaux told me how three of the guys she was fucking were accusing her of drugging them and even bullying her by calling her a skunk and a whore out loud and how the rumour that she was behind those tainted drinks was spreading like wildfire. But then you had to be the knight in shining armour and got involved and got everyone to forgive her and threatened anyone who spread the rumour or treated her badly. I told Margaux to put more pills in more sports drinks and get your ass kicked out of the team too but you guys kept passing all the drug tests, so I decided to take matters into my own hands. I stole Margaux's ID and broke into school late last night, and put those pills in her locker. Then I put that ‘anonymous’ tip into the suggestion box. And before you even think about going to the principal with this, I made sure that I took a sheet from Margaux’s monogrammed notepad. So if anything, the suspicions will fall on her. So Knox, tell me, who do you wanna save? Your precious little sister or your skunk of a girlfriend? Because one of ‘em will be blamed for this!”
Beverly Hills Prep Academy The Complete Boxset : A Light Bully Romance Page 91